GM shows off Volt, progress toward 2010 launch

Funny. . . the picture of the 'car' looks like it had caught on fire and is smoking.

Yeah, that would be about right for a new GM product.

 

Putting aside the fact that GM is using it for PR, the content of the article was fairly interesting: November 2010, 400 lb battery pack, either battery supplier would do, 30-something mile highway range, small ongoing improvements in aerodynamics. I think the requirement for a 9 second 0-60 time is foolish but consistent with producing this as a sporty car (which I suppose makes that a foolish consistency).

Maybe I have drunk the Kool-Aid on this one, but if you can ignore the fact that GM's incessantly talking about it, the actual underlying product development sounds plausible. They may yet price the thing out of the market, or persist with that hairbrained battery-rental idea that got floated earlier, or find some excuse only to rent to fleets, but barring that, it seems pretty reasonable.

Wikipedia lists the RAV4-EV at 18 seconds 0-60, 120 mile range, and $42K MSRP in 2002. Adjust that for inflation (via the US BLS inflation calculator) and that would be $49.5K in 2008, plausibly $52K in 2010. But the RAV4 provided a lot of interior room, and there were some large dollar subsidies. By contrast, the proposed GM vehicle is probably going to have a cramped interior (take a look at the back seat of a Cobalt some time), might cost $35K with smaller subsidies available if at all, with 30-some mile electric range and a gas engine.

My point being, if it were all PR and vaporware, why not promise the moon? But that's not what GM is doing. They're promising something that in some respects is better and in some respects worse than a RAV4 EV, for a much lower MSRP but (almost certainly) without the large subsidies the RAV4 EV got. At the least, you have to give them credit for a realistic simulation of an actual product.

The ongoing PR campaign is obnoxious but the underlying product appears plausible. For all I know, the potential for PR might have been the sweetener that convinced GM management to go ahead with this. If so, they can blather all they want if they'll produce the car.

 

I also wondered if the battery had caught fire.

Still looks as aerodynamic as a house brick.

With the advances in battery development the range should be better than RAV4-EV was and it should be cheaper. General inflation hasn't been very evident in the automotive market place over recent years, competition is a great thing.

 

yep
that's smoke.

Where's the mirrors?

 

That end to the article is very interesting.

With the heater or A/C running on my 19-mile mostly-highway commute with very little braking, the misleading "40-mile" promotion really takes hit.

.

 

The above quote is from the article. The author is apparently unaware of the Tesla Roadster, which uses lithium-ion batteries, and which is now rolling off the production line. Should we believe anything else he says when he has demonstrated that he knows nothing at all about electric cars?

John beat me to the punch on the range claim. My requirement is a reliable, worst-case 40 miles on electric. If it turns out only to get 32 miles on electric, it does not meet my needs. I can go 35 miles in my Xebra.

Okay. I'll give them credit for designing an ad campaign sufficiently plausible that a six-year-old would not look at it and say "That's impossible!" But if you think about it, that's the art of advertising: Making false claims that seem sufficiently plausible that people will buy the product; or in this case, sufficiently plausible that people will believe the hype.

 

Once again -- Toyota didn't say a word about the Prius until
they were fully ready to sell it.
.
_H*

 

I'm starting to think we should have a separate forum just for the daily Volt press releases.

 

It looks like they are finding out what "Hotel Load" means.

They found out that to meet the life cycle of the the li-ion battery, it only has 50% usable state of charge. This makes 8kWh available out of 16kWh. Remember the concept was stated to use 80% of the pack.

So, either the range will drop or the cost will go up along with the weight of the pack. Come on, they should have done all these work before creating the concept.

I just hope Toyota IQ plug-in announcement with 50 miles range does not appear. This will spoil all the fun we are having with Volt.

 

Actually, lead batteries cannot be discharged below 50% SOC if they are to be made to last as long as possible, and NiMH only have about 40% usable charge as used in the Prius, but lithium batteries have a much greater range of usable charge without significantly shortening their life, though they are far less tolerant than lead of being either over-charged or discharged beyond their limits.

I will laugh like mad if Toyota comes up with a car that does what the Volt is supposed to do, and comes out with it sooner. And of course if Toyota builds it it will be more reliable.

I would not put it past GM to build the Volt, but intentionally build it with such a low level of quality that the buyers all complain and sales die and they have an excuse to kill the project.

See, here's the thing: GM thought nobody would buy the EV-1 because of its limited range and small size. Now they know there's a rising clamor for an electric car. So this time they know that if they want an EV to fail they must make sure to really keep the quality down.

 

Well, the Tesla Roadster isn't in production yet (like the Volt and several others), not sure which would be called 'first'. But there is a car on the road today that does use LiIon batteries - the Toyota Vitz - not sold in the U.S. and not a full hybrid, just powers off the engine when not moving. But they've been using it in limited numbers since 2003. I think Fiat or somebody builds a car in Europe with Lithium batteries as well.

Vitz story here

 

I think malorn has hijacked Tony's PriusChat account.

The Tesla Roadster went into regular production about two weeks ago. I believe this makes it the first production vehicle to use lithium batteries.

Of course, my Xebra uses lithium batteries, but that's a retrofit. I've been driving lithium-iron-phosphate for about a month.

 

I have feeling that if you drove the Volt like the Xebra (IE, limited top speed to 35mph), you'd get significantly more than 40 miles out of it.

 

Yeah, but if I have to drive it like the Xebra, why buy a new car? Actually, I'd like a pure EV that will get me 75 miles on the freeway. It looks like a conversion could do that. I have a lot of research to do. I have my eye on a place that looks promising. In that case, I'd keep the Prius for road trips.